Leaving a peanut so that someone might break the shell to the nut inside.

Who You Are in His-Story: A Manifesto of Your True Identity.

The human story is His-story. Christ is God’s love among us. God expressed the depth and passion of His love by giving everything at the cross so that we would be re-united in perfect union with Him. The cross is a timeless intersection of evil and good, eternal death and eternal life. Everyone must choose at that intersection. I have chosen life. [Deut. 30:19]. I have moved from death and despair to life and hope by believing in Christ and accepting in my heart the truth of His love.

God is in a romance with you. Here is the hope of life: that God pursues you, and that you pursue God. Do you feel the love, the desire, the drama and the pathos of a passionate [intensely fervent] God? Be swept fully into his/her power. Be fully alive in the power of love. Loosen up, and let the mystery of romance happen. Be fueled by positive emotion!

God created you to be a reflector of his/her glory. Let the cross be your “true north” compass. Order every thought, feeling and action at the center of the cross. In ordering your life this way , you magnify the glory of God, and you will be happy. To be God-filled is to be joy-filled, to be fully alive as the person God uniquely created. Don’t settle for second rate, cheap pleasures. Your greatest pleasure, fulfillment, and joy is in being “like God”—a “God reflector”: uniquely you, creative, free, spontaneous, fearless, productive, vibrant, active, compassionate, truth-filled, caring, and generous.

Think God-sized thoughts. Daily practice conscious alignment of your mission and goals with God’s plans. You were created for greatness because you have a great God. Stop living and thinking small. Take big risks knowing God is more than big enough to contain your failures and sustain your successes. He promises and delivers the ultimate success.

Act God-sized, faith-filled actions. Demonstrate the truth of your salvation and faith by the boldness and consistency of your actions. Let every action issue from an inquiry into God’s will and purpose. Act to bring glory to God by demonstrating the character of Jesus to the world. Actions arising from faith will sometimes require obedient sacrifice in the face of uncertainty and wonder of “just what is God up to?” It is enough to have faith, that is, to truly “know” that he is up to something very good. He alone has the eternal big picture.

Without God, “everything is nothing” and with God “everything is everything”. Every person and event in every moment, however ordinary and “small” is of eternal significance, to be for his purpose and glory.

“Rest in the love of God.” Let God nourish your soul. Take a walk with God. Spend time meditating on His presence and character. Be renewed daily, and take time throughout the day to reconnect with her. Let her love cleanse you of the negativity, sins, anxieties and burdens of the day. Then you will have the abundance needed to be loving and generous to others. You will be empowered to expand your ego centered fearful “x-box” to allow God’s “0”s to be present. You may even escape the “matrix” with its comforting illusions. Come out of your stupor, and the illusion that this is a material world with a spiritual aspect. This is a spiritual world with a material aspect.

Give up on your sin-based ego strategies, and surrender to God’s strategy for your life.

Christ is a redeemer and re-maker of broken hearts and broken lives. He is close to the broken hearted and those crushed in spirit. As your heart becomes the heart of Christ, you too act as Christ’s agent to redeem the broken hearts, minds, and bodies of those who do not know him but for your example of love. This way of practicing life, practicing sexuality and desire, practicing social justice, practicing law, practicing parenthood, practicing your writing and poetry, practicing romance and affection, practicing friendship, practicing stewardship, practicing rest and relaxation, all these “ways” lead to the “good life”. The “good life” is a transformed and transformative life that requires a warrior-poet spirit. You must embrace positive adversity. You must accept reality over illusion. You must stop running from pain and ambiguity by seeking quick fixes.

Do not return injury for injury, but return injury with love and mercy. This is the character of God in the person of Jesus. Give back better than you get. By not reacting and retaliating you give yourself space and time to redeem the situation. You live at an elevated consciousness that can heal and restore by your example. Ask: what is God teaching me in this situation or through this person?

The paradox of the cross is that we can take up that cross in this fallen world, and carry it, because our life energy flows into us from the other side of that cross. This cross includes the pain and struggle of surrender. It includes the feeling of positive tension as we stretch the “rubber band” of our resistance. We live by faith that the price of separation from God (death) has been fully paid. We are free to live without fear. We can live lives of risking for the magnification of Christ among us. We can confront the darkness, knowing Christ is with us in the “g.a.p.” [“Guidance, Abiding Presence, Provision”]. [Esther to Mordecai: “If I perish, I perish” or Caleb to the Israelites: “Let us take the land”]

Roscoe Expertly Removing the Shell

Rewards Come To Those Hungry for What’s Within

Listen and See: The Divine Symphony

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence . . . "
- George Eliot, Middlemarch